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Good day, Number Six

Jun 11, 2008
By Mike.
Culture, Geekery, Television

Six of One announced last week:

The 2009 mini-series of the The Prisoner will feature six one-hour episodes, all written by Bill Gallagher (Clocking Off; Conviction; Lark Rise to Candleford). Sir Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings; The Da Vinci Code) is in the role of Number Two and James Caviezel (Deja Vu; The Passion of the Christ) plays Number Six. The producer is Trevor Hopkins (Dracula; Agatha Christie: Poirot; William and Mary) and direction is by Jon Jones (Cold Feet; Northanger Abbey; Diary of Anne Frank). Location filming is in Namibia and Cape Town, with shooting commencing in the first week of August, 2008. The “pacy, radical reinvention of the original show” is a joint production between AMC (American Movie Channel) and ITV (UK).

Now would be a good time to catch up on the original.

Be seeing you!

Last 5 posts by Mike

6 Comments
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6 Comments

  1. Patrick  •  Jun 11, 2008 @12:32 pm

    You SO blew it on your post title.

    I dread this remake. I surely do. The Prisoner is the best episodic television show of all time, and a perfect thing cannot be remade.

    And of course they’re not making it in Portmeirion (”the Village”). Gah! I encourage any of our English/Welsh readers to visit the place if they’ve never been. The combination of architecture, setting, and history makes it one of the most remarkable tourist traps on earth.

  2. Grandy  •  Jun 11, 2008 @12:45 pm

    I watched the original in the earlier, glory days* of the sci-fi channel. At first I was like “WTF?” and then I was hooked and made sure to watch it from start to finish. I think remaking this might be risking some seriously bad karma. I try to keep an open mind, though.

    *Sci Fi, despite the large volumne of crap movies that it airs, actually produces and shows quality programming. And has for some time. It’s had some up and down eras to be sure. Back when we first started getting it, it was airing lots of old classic shows and even went out of it’s way to do things like “classic shows beginnings” and “classic shows finalies” marathons. It was worth it, even with some of the childhood favorites that I knew wouldn’t (and didn’t) age well. I miss that Sci Fi isn’t doing this as aggressively as it used to. Topic for another time. Anyway, it was not long after this era that they started showing B5, which I hadn’t seen. Good times.

  3. tgb  •  Jun 11, 2008 @1:35 pm

    I agree with Patrick (as he well knows) regarding the fact that any “reimagining” of the Prisoner will only end badly. Eliminating both the mystery of the real-life location of The Village, and not having different No. 2’s each episode are both ill omens of things to come.

  4. Chris  •  Jun 11, 2008 @2:03 pm

    I’ll watch it. I’m sure it won’t be as good as the original, but I’ll watch it anyway.

  5. Daveman  •  Jun 12, 2008 @5:21 am

    Bah… weren’t there early reports/rumors that Christophen Eccleston was going to be #6?

  6. Tscott  •  Jun 12, 2008 @7:07 am

    I took this news, plus the fact that DeepDiscount has its 20% sale going on right now, as a sign to buy The Complete Prisoner DVD set, a set that I’d almost bought many times before. I’ve seen a few episodes on TV a while ago and liked it. Finally, I’ll see it all.

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